The Taizé chant There is One Lord, with its cantor’s verses, chimes exactly with today’s second reading, which was also the basis for Fr Frank’s homily. So it felt like a good choice. We usually sing Taizé pieces during communion, since the short memorable refrains are good processional material. It was good to sing one today that didn't have to be gentle and contemplative! Though I suppose it’s a failure of my imagination to think that all communion songs need to be quiet thoughtful ones.

Our opening hymn, with its text by Sylvia Dunstan, was another good new discovery from Laudate, and just right for today’s Gospel story of the feeding of the five thousand.

Today was the choir’s last Sunday until September – we take a welcome break during the month of August. Musical selections for the next few Sundays are in the hands of The Management, who may keep us posted here if he gets his computer fixed!

It's not long at all since we last had a Sunday with a strong “shepherd” theme, but we found a whole different set of musical expressions for it. As well as the Bach and He like a shepherd true in verse two of Praise we our God with joy, we had The living God my shepherd is, with words by one J. Driscoll SJ (of the British Jesuit province, d. 1940, it says somewhere – anyone know any more?), and sung to the tune of Brother James's Air by James Leith MacBeth Bain (1840-1925). These are better words for this tune than the more familiar The Lord’s my shepherd, since there's no need to repeat the third and fourth lines of each verse. Another pleasing new discovery in the pages of Laudate.

Dona nobis pacem from Taizé has a verse for cantor setting some of the text from Sunday’s second reading from Ephesians:

Christ is our peace, making us one.In his own person, he destroyed hostility,He came and preached the good news of peace.

A difficult week to plan for, I found, perhaps because I couldn't find a lot in our repertoire to match the texts of Sunday’s readings and propers. We settled on two items reflecting the sending out of the twelve in the day’s Gospel reading. One was our recessional hymn, Forth in thy name, the other Bernadette Farrell’s God has chosen me, minus the bongo solo, alas (we did it one year, when one of our choral scholars was a percussionist), but with the three-part a cappella close harmony for the women’s voices in the verses. Everyone sang the refrains.

Alan Smith’s psalm setting was from Psalm Songs, and for the Gospel Acclamation we had the mode 2 chant setting that comes up many times in the year (including the feast of Ss Peter and Paul), and features in Decani Music’s Cantate.

Elgar’s O Salutaris Hostia – his third setting of the same text – dates from his early years, when he was still involved with Catholic liturgical music. He probably wrote it when he was twenty-three, but there are plenty of touches that hint at the future composer of the Enigma Variations or Gerontius, at least for a choir willing to ham it up. Like we did.

Welcome

This is a record of musical activities at St John's Cathedral, Salford - what we've been doing and what's coming up, and some thoughts on the musical planning process. You can also find information about joining the choir, and about our choral scholarships program.